The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“Yes,” they reply, “all—that is the teaching we have from the apostle Paul.²³ Wherever we go, we do not quarrel … it is not befitting for us. You are a slave and, no help for it, you must endure, for, according to the apostle Paul, slaves should obey. But remember that you are a Christian, and therefore with you we have nothing to worry about, since even without us the gates of paradise are open to your soul, while these people will be in darkness if we don’t join them up, so we must worry about them.”

And they show me a book:

“Here,” they say, “see how many names we’ve got written down in this register—that’s how many people we’ve joined to our faith!”

I didn’t talk with them anymore and didn’t see any more of them, except for one of them, and that by chance: one of my little sons came running from somewhere and said:

“Daddy, there’s a man lying over there near the lake.”

I went to look: I see that his legs have been skinned from the knees down like stockings, and his arms from the elbows down like gloves. The Tartars do it skillfully: they make an incision around and pull the skin off in one piece. The man’s head was lying nearby, with a cross cut on the forehead.

“Eh,” I thought, “you didn’t want to concern yourself with me, your countryman, and I condemned you, and here you’ve been found worthy of a martyr’s crown. Forgive me now for Christ’s sake!”

I made a cross over him, put his head together with his body, bowed to the ground, buried him, and sang “Holy God”²⁴ over him—and what became of his comrade I don’t know, but most likely he also ended by receiving the crown, because afterwards the Tartar women of the horde turned up with lots of little icons like the ones these missionaries had with them.

“So these missionaries even get as far as the Ryn Sands?”

“Of course they do, only it’s all no use.”

“Why so?”

“They don’t know how to handle them. The Asiatic has to be brought to faith by fear, so that he’s shaking with fright, but they preach the meek God to him. At the outstart that’s no good at all, because without threats an Asiatic will never respect a meek God for anything and will kill the preachers.”

“And the main thing, it must be supposed, when going to the Asiatics, is that you should have no money or valuables with you?”

“You shouldn’t, sir, though all the same they won’t believe that somebody came and brought nothing with him; they’ll think you buried it somewhere in the steppe, and start torturing you, and torture you to death.”

“The bandits!”

“Yes, sir, that’s what happened in my time with a certain Jew: an old Jew turned up from who knows where and also talked about faith. He was a good man, and obviously zealous for his faith, and all in such rags that you could see his whole body, and he started talking about faith so that it even seemed you could listen to him forever. At the outstart I began to argue with him, saying what kind of faith is it if you haven’t got any saints, but he said, ‘We do,’ and he began reading from the Talmud about the saints they have … very entertaining. ‘And this Talmud,’ he says, ‘was written by the rabbi Jovoz ben Levi, who was so learned that sinful people couldn’t look at him; as soon as they looked, they all died straightaway, on account of which God called him before Him and said: “You, learned rabbi, Jovoz ben Levi! It’s good that you’re so learned, but it’s not good that because of you all my Jews may die. It was not for that,” he says, “that I drove them over the steppe with Moses and made them cross the sea. For that, get out of your fatherland and live somewhere where nobody can see you.” ’ And so the rabbi Levi left and went straight to the place where paradise was, and he buried himself up to the neck in the sand there, and stayed in the sand for thirteen years, and even though he was buried up to the neck, he prepared a lamb for himself every Saturday, cooked by a fire that came down from heaven. And if a mosquito or a fly landed on his nose to drink his blood, they were consumed at once by a heavenly fire …’ The Asiatics liked this story about the learned rabbi very much, and they listened to the Jew for a long time; but then they got after him and began questioning him about where he buried his money before coming to them. The Jew swore up and down that he had no money, that God had sent him with nothing but wisdom, but they didn’t believe him, and raking up the coals where the campfire had been burning, they spread a horsehide over the hot coals, put the Jew on it, and started shaking it. ‘Tell us, tell us, where is the money?’ But when they saw that he had turned all black and didn’t speak, they said:

“ ‘Wait, let’s bury him up to the neck in the sand: maybe that will bring him around.’

“And so they buried him, but the Jew just died buried like that, and his head stuck up black from the sand for a long time afterwards, but the children began to be afraid of it, so they cut it off and threw it into a dry well.”

“There’s your preaching to them!”